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Disney's Club Penguin: Crushing It With Community Content

While many titles draw upon the community for content in a variety of ways, Disney’s Club Penguin transformed a scheduled lull into its most successful event of all time by tapping into the community.

Club Penguin, which allows kids to explore, create, and play in a safe space online brought in 1.8 million logins in a single day during “Operation Blackout”. We were able to chat with head of Club Penguin, Chris Heatherly, about the project.

Operation Blackout began when a leaked image of the Club Penguin content calendar made its way to the web. The whiteboard image contained a block of time simply labeled “blackout”. This was simply going to be time that wasn’t going to have any content pushed, hence the name, but players had other ideas. What could the blackout mean? Rumors and discussion began flowing. Club Penguin’s demographic is generally in the age range of 6-13, and these players took to blogs, Twitter, forums, and within the world itself to discuss what this “top secret” event could be.

And for another title that may have been the end of it. But the production team at Club Penguin picked up on the noise, and tapped into the playerbase to forge what has been their most successful event to date. With the community already abuzz with discussion the team continued to fuel the fire by dropping calculated leaks, hints, and teases alluding to the top secret blackout project.

Using player inspired story and ideas the Club Penguin team was able to bring a highly engaging experience to the audience and turn downtime into a veritable cavalcade of content. Players created Club Penguin’s new iconic villain – Herbert P. Bear, the “polar opposite” of a polar bear.

While Operation Blackout may be one of the more extreme examples, Club Penguin’s virtual world is heavily based in community-driven ideas, projects, and story. As with other youth titles, moderators and staff are involved in ensuring that the community remains a safe space for interaction, but they’re also looking to tap into the community consciousness.

Club Penguin fan fiction and lore are continually being generated from player-run blogs, discussions within the playspace, YouTube, and social media. The philosophy behind production is to incorporate these aspects into the world.

Based on the unprecedented success of Operation Blackout, it looks like that philosophy is working.

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